Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART FOUR CHAPTER 4
Chapter 4
ALEXEY Alexandrovitch, after meeting Vronsky on his own steps, drove, as he had
intended, to the Italian opera. He sat through two acts there, and saw everyone
he had wanted to see. On returning home, he carefully scrutinized the hat stand,
and noticing that there was not a military overcoat there, he went, as usual, to his
own room. But, contrary to his usual habit, he did not go to bed, he walked up and
down his study till three o’clock in the morning. The feeling of furious anger with
his wife, who would not observe the proprieties and keep to the one stipulation he
had laid on her, not to receive her lover in her own home, gave him no peace. She
had not complied with his request, and he was bound to punish her and carry out his
threat–obtain a divorce and take away his son. He knew all the difficulties connected
with this course, but he had said he would do it, and now he must carry out his
threat. Countess Lidia Ivanovna had hinted that this was the best way out of his
position, and of late the obtaining of divorces had been brought to such perfection
that Alexey Alexandrovitch saw a possibility of overcoming the formal difficulties.
Misfortunes never come singly, and the affairs of the reorganization of the native
tribes, and of the irrigation of the lands of the Zaraisky province, had brought such
official worries upon Alexey Alexandrovitch that he had been of late in a continual
condition of extreme irritability.
He did not sleep the whole night, and his fury, growing in a sort of vast, arithmetical
progression, reached its highest limits in the morning. He dressed in haste, and
as though carrying his cup full of wrath, and fearing to spill any over, fearing to lose
with his wrath the energy necessary for the interview with his wife, he went into her
room directly he heard she was up.
Anna, who had thought she knew her husband so well, was amazed at his appearance
when he went in to her. His brow was lowering, and his eyes stared darkly
before him, avoiding her eyes; his mouth was tightly and contemptuously shut. In
his walk, in his gestures, in the sound of his voice there was a determination and
firmness such as his wife had never seen in him. He went into her room, and without
greeting her, walked straight up to her writing-table, and taking her keys, opened a
drawer.
“What do you want?” she cried.
“Your lover’s letters,” he said.
“They’re not here,” she said, shutting the drawer; but from that action he saw
he had guessed right, and roughly pushing away her hand, he quickly snatched a
portfolio in which he knew she used to put her most important papers. She tried to
pull the portfolio away, but he pushed her back.
“Sit down! I have to speak to you,” he said, putting the portfolio under his arm,
and squeezing it so tightly with his elbow that his shoulder stood up. Amazed and
intimidated, she gazed at him in silence.
“I told you that I would not allow you to receive your lover in this house.”
“I had to see him to...”
She stopped, not finding a reason.
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